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Keir Starmer will battle for his Downing Street future in the Commons this afternoon, as he seeks to explain to MPs how Peter Mandelson was appointed British ambassador to the US despite failing security vetting. The PM, who has rejected calls to resign, is expected to blame the former Foreign Office permanent under-secretary, Olly Robbins, for the “unforgivable” act of not disclosing the vetting verdict. Tehran has accused America of violating the countries’ fragile ceasefire agreement and vowed to retaliate against US forces, after they took “full custody” of an Iranian cargo ship that tried to evade their naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it has “no plan” for the next round of peace talks with America, which are scheduled to take place today in Pakistan, and that no decision had been made whether to even attend. The glorious spring weather conditions have caused Britain’s bluebells to bloom unusually early this year. A mild and rainy winter combined with the clement start to the season have created prime conditions for the flowers, which cropped up around the country two weeks earlier than normal. |
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Bluebells in Kent. Getty |
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Mandelson and Starmer in Washington last year. Carl Court/Getty |
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Why I believe Starmer on Mandelson |
I hold no candle for Keir Starmer, says Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph, but on the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal I’m inclined to believe him. I went through security vetting so that I could read unreleased government papers for my biography of Margaret Thatcher. The first thing they tell you is that any information you disclose will never be shared with ministers or civil servants or anyone else – this is essential, because no one would reveal anything if they thought their secrets would be “passed around” Whitehall. UK Security Vetting provides its recommendation to the relevant civil service official – in Mandelson’s case, the Foreign Office permanent under-secretary, Olly Robbins – who then makes a final decision, either sticking by the recommendation or overruling it, and tells the government. “Them’s the rules.” |
Where Starmer does have a case to answer is in his treatment of Robbins, saying his failure to inform No 10 that he, Robbins, had overruled the vetting advice was “unforgivable”. But it was Sir Olly’s job to make a decision, and he was under no obligation to explain the details or process. Plus, of course, given Mandelson’s appointment had already been announced, he may have thought keeping schtum would spare the PM some “unnecessary pain”. You could argue that Robbins deserved to be sacked because he made a bad call. But he should never have been put in the position of making such an important decision in the first place, as per the “once-basic principle” of the British government: “Officials advise; ministers decide.” Contrary to the claims of Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey, none of this makes Starmer a liar. “He just does not understand how government and politics work.” |
🇷🇺🤨 One area where the PM cannot claim ignorance, says Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail, is on Mandelson’s directorship at the Russian company Sistema. The firm was known to be, in the words of one security source, “riddled with Russian intelligence officers”. Yet Mandelson retained his interests in Sistema until 2020. These links were included in the Cabinet Office’s “due diligence checklist” – which is one of the few documents in this sorry affair that Starmer has admitted he read. “No one told me,” the PM will protest this afternoon. But they did. He just chose to ignore them. |
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Finalists in this year’s Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest – selected from more than 17,000 submissions – include a majestic shot of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy at low tide; a Mundari child cleaning the horns of a bull in South Sudan; two cone-headed grasshoppers resting on thistles in Terrassa, Spain; three golden monkeys snuggled together to stay warm in China’s Qinling Mountain nature reserve; light and dark fields branching through Spanish farmlands; and a young girl leading her horse across the arid land of her family’s ranch in New Mexico. To see more, click the image. |
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Three steins: roughly the same cost as a year’s subscription. Getty |
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